Conventional commercial deployable sensor network hardware does not have the computational capability or the communications capability to function as a relatively large hardware network in a remote location. However, certain sensing applications would benefit from such capabilities. For example, environmental monitoring systems have field locations that are often in extreme, remote environments. No power is readily available, yet the science experiments generally require sensors and equipment to run constantly for periods of one to five years.
As such, conventional sensors are connected in a wired array and data is stored to a local hard drive. Data retrieval is often manual, requiring a field campaign lasting a few days. Furthermore, once at the site, damage may have occurred and valuable data may have been lost due to weather, animals, or other factors. Wired arrays are also not readily scalable in number of nodes or distance between nodes. Manual data retrieval makes data management and distribution difficult. Accordingly, an improved sensor system may be beneficial.